Work Underway

The pilot at ProHealth Physicians, a primary care practice, and its partner cardiology practice, is testing and refining how Patient Priorities Care works in a real-world healthcare environment. With the assistance of a few hundred older adults with multiple chronic conditions, nine primary care clinicians, five cardiologists, and two trained health priorities facilitators, the pilot is testing more effective and feasible ways to elicit and transmit patients’ priorities, help clinicians translate these priorities into treatment options, and incorporate these changes into the busy clinical workflow through health information technology and clinical communication methods. The pilot is also comparing the care of patients who do, and do not, participate in Patient Priorities Care to understand its impact on patient- and clinician-reported outcomes, healthcare burden, and healthcare utilization.

To ensure Patient Priorities Care achieves its aim of care that is consistent with what matters most to patients, it’s important to answer key questions regarding how to incorporate it successfully into clinical practice. With support from the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI), Patient Priorities Care is developing a research agenda co-designed with patients and caregivers. In 2016, Patient Priorities Care partnered with the American College of Cardiology’s Geriatric Council and Patient & Family Centered Care Partners, Inc. to convene a large conference of stakeholders. These stakeholders – patients, caregivers, clinicians, researchers, health system representatives, health policy experts, and payers – helped generate key research questions, including:

• What are appropriate measures to evaluate this approach?
• How can this approach be implemented in different patient groups?
• What tools will help patients, caregivers, and clinicians focus care on what matters most to patients?

In the second year of the PCORI engagement award, Patient Priorities Care is partnering with surgeons who are involved in the Coalition for Quality in Geriatric Surgery to further refine a research agenda that will apply to many specialties.

Patient Priorities Care is working with a cadre of experts and in partnership with the American College of Physicians to develop this curriculum. It is based on real-life encounters between patients and clinicians and is designed to model and teach the knowledge and skills needed to participate in this approach to decision-making and care. The curriculum will provide web-based teaching, scripts, and patient scenarios to prepare patients and providers to communicate priorities-aligned care between patients and clinicians, and across clinicians.